Australia's unemployment rate at 5.0 per cent in January 2011 (seasonally adjusted)

The Australian unemployment rate stood at 5.0 per cent in January, as announced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics today.

The ABS reported the number of people employed increased by 24,000 to 11.442 million, seasonally adjusted, in January. The rise in employment was driven by an increase in part-time employment, up 32,000 people to 3.419 million that was partially offset by a decrease in full-time employment, down 8,000 people to 8.022 million.

The number of people unemployed increased by 8,900 people to 606,500 in January, reported the ABS.

The ABS seasonally adjusted monthly aggregate hours worked series showed a decrease in January, down 12.7 million hours to 1,584.4 million hours.

The ABS reported labour force participation in January of 65.9 per cent, an increase of 0.1 percentage points from December.

Due to flooding in Queensland, operational difficulties were experienced in conducting the Labour Force Survey in January 2011. There was a larger than usual number of households in the Queensland sample which could not be interviewed. While the disruption to survey operations will have slightly reduced the quality of some Queensland estimates, the impact on the estimates is not statistically significant for most series. Due to the sample loss noted above, there will be increased volatility in the Queensland estimates, particularly in the original and seasonally adjusted estimates. Given increased volatility, the ABS continues to encourage users to focus on trend estimates in monitoring the underlying level of series.

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